My first hotel experience in Lapu Lapu City was the Crown Regency Hotel. I will be comparing it, in part, with my visit last year. The Crown Regency is an older hotel along a main road in Lapu Lapu City. Per the elevator buttons, it has ten floors. It has a small swimming pool and some cottages as well as the hotel on the property. It costs about $25 a day—give or take.
Compared to last year, my visit was better. The cockroaches were absent this trip and only tiny ants were visible—mostly in the bathroom area. The hotel has a refrigerator in each room and also a stove for cooking. Please note that said stove is propane, and you need to provide your own tank of explosive gas—oh, I mean propane—as one is not provided for you. As I learned from my previous stay, the Crown Regency has its own generator which was handy last trip as power was out for four days in this half of the province due to a typhoon.
Lastly, maid service was much improved here. Only in Canada is the maid service more efficient and lethal. During this trip, I was provided with clean towels daily and trash was emptied daily as well. Good job. The hotel seemed to me to be sparsely in use and mostly vacant. At night, the gate to the parking area was closed much of the time to discourage unwanted visitors.
I have two complaints about my stay this trip, first, when checking in they wanted 2,000 pesos in cash as a deposit. Neither I nor my girl had that amount of cash when I checked in. They finally let me stay without the deposit. Second, I didn’t have any hot water in the shower. The water pressure was good but setting the shower valve to full hot was not noticeably different from full cold. Either choice was roughly room temperature.
My stay at Crown Regency was about five days. I then moved to a different and slightly cheaper hotel. Said hotel will be the subject of another blog.
On a scale of five, I would give Crown Regency a rating between 3.5 and 4. There is room for improvement, but it was better than my last trip.
Closing thoughts. The hotel now has Chinese letters above the entrance that I don’t recall seeing on my last trip. Possibly my memory is bad or they have new management. Also, I did not eat in the restaurant during this trip. The food wasn’t very good on the last trip, but it was literally the only place open for the first two or three days following the typhoon last year. The fact that the employees even showed up following the typhoon last year was a big deal to me. Most folks stayed home to clear debris and care for their families.